Foursquare: It Keeps Getting Better
I wrote about my love of the Foursquare app a while back and I think I'll "check in" again (sorry that was terrible). Anyway, I feel like this app gets update all the time and never stops getting better. I've said before that it is a flagship iPhone app. It was one of the first and it's still growing strong. They recently raised a ton of funding, again.
Most recent changes I've seen to the app is it asking me about prices of places I've been going to and more questions about the places I am near or checking into. It knows when I'm in a particular area, and recommends new places to try automatically and you can filter things down on your own if you choose.
After a recent vacation I got an email asking me to quickly leave a tip on any of the places I visited on my trip. You can shut this stuff off of course but if you're willing to take a few minutes it can only make the whole system better.
But the biggest thing in my mind is the data. Think of the data you could get about yourself. if you used Foursquare all the time. A few things come to mind quickly:
- What restaurant or bar did I go to most last year?
- How many bars did I go to last year?
- How many times did I go to yoga last month?
- What type of food did i get most last year (Italian, American, Chinese etc)?
With this data Foursquare will continue to evolve and improve. They were one of the major apps that was there at the birth of the smartphone movement and they've been going strong in it since. I predict they will keep adding features until they get purchased by a one of the major tech companies like Google, Apple or Microsoft. The data alone is worth it.
